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Patator is a multi-purpose brute-forcer, with a modular design and a flexible usage. Basically the author got tired of using Medusa, Hydra, ncrack, metasploit auxiliary modules, nmap NSE scripts and the like because:

They either do not work or are not reliable (false negatives several times in the past)

They are slow (not multi-threaded or not testing multiple passwords within the same TCP connection)

They lack very useful features that are easy to code in python (eg. interactive runtime)

Basically you should give Patator a try once you get disappointed by Medusa, Hydra or other brute-force tools and are about to code your own small script because Patator will allow you to:

Not write the same code over and over

Run multi-threaded

Benefit for useful features such as the interactive runtime commands, response logging, etc.

January 20, 2019 - 235 Shares

Honestly there hasn’t been much news over the holiday period, well maybe there was but no one bothered reporting it. There was the Stratfor case of course, which Anonymous is saying wasn’t anything to do with them.

The scale of this incident somehow reminds me of the whole TJ MAXX fiasco a few years back.

Anyway, this whole scheme sounds like a case of people installed VNC with weak passwords and someone finding it by accident – it doesn’t even seem to have been a targeted hack.

For thousands of customers of Subway restaurants around the US over the past few years, paying for their $5 footlong sub was a ticket to having their credit card data stolen. In a scheme dating back at least to 2008, a band of Romanian hackers is alleged to have stolen payment card data from the point-of-sale (POS) systems of hundreds of small businesses, including more than 150 Subway restaurant franchises and at least 50 other small retailers. And those retailers made it possible by practically leaving their cash drawers open to the Internet, letting the hackers ring up over $3 million in fraudulent charges.

In an indictment unsealed in the US District Court of New Hampshire on December 8, the hackers are alleged to have gathered the credit and debit card data from over 80,000 victims.

“This is the crime of the future,” said Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications at McAfee Labs in an interview with Ars. Instead of coming in with guns and robbing the till, he said, criminals can target small businesses, “root them from across the planet, and steal digitally.”

The tools used in the crime are widely available on the Internet for anyone willing to take the risks, and small businesses’ generally poor security practices and reliance on common, inexpensive software packages to run their operations makes them easy pickings for large-scale scams like this one, Marcus said.

While the scale of this particular ring may be significant, the methods used by the attackers were hardly sophisticated. According to the indictment, the systems attacked were discovered through a targeted port scan of blocks of IP addresses to detect systems with a specific type of remote desktop access software running on them. The software provided a ready-made back door for the hackers to gain entry to the POS systems. The PCI Security Standards Council, which governs credit card and debit card payment systems security, requires two-factor authentication for remote access to POS systems—something the applications used by these retailers clearly didn’t have.

It seems like there’s a pretty large ring behind this operation, just due to the sheer number of locations compromised and the amount of time it must have taken to install all the malware and logging software.

Plus the network infrastructure that was build to receive the logs via FTP upload, the criminals were pretty smart too – they even ‘backed up’ their stolen data to sendspace just in case their hosting got taken down.

Once they were in, the hackers then deployed a collection of hacking tools to the POS systems, including logging software that recorded all the input into the systems—including credit card scans. They also installed a trojan, xp.exe, onto the systems to provide a back door to reconnect to the systems to allow the installation of additional malware, and prevent any security software updates.

Collected data from the loggers was posted by the malware to FTP “dump” sites on a number of Web servers in the US created with domains they registered through GoDaddy.com using stolen credit card data. In addition to using the stolen data to register their own domains and pay for hosting service, the hackers periodically rounded up the dumped transaction data and moved it to sendspace.com, a file transfer site. Richard James of sendspace.com says that his company cooperated with the FBI in the investigation of the hack. ” Sendspace [is] a file hosting and transfer site used by millions every single day,” he said in an email to Ars Technica,”and as such can indeed be used for activities which are against our TOS and that we do not condone.”

Some of the data was used to print counterfeit credit cards using blank plastic cards and embossing machines. One of the alleged hackers, Cezar Iulian Butu, was generating counterfeit cards with an embossing machine out of a house in Belgium in October of 2010, and working with a group, used the cards “among other uses [to] place bets at local French ‘tobacco’ shops,” the Justice Department said in its filing. The rest of the stolen data was sold in blocks to other criminals from the Sendspace server.

According to a report by Schuman, Subway’s corporate IT and a credit card company discovered the data breach “almost simultaneously.” Subway Corporate Press Relations Manager Kevin Kane told Ars that “the tech guys who dealt with this moved and put steps in place [to block the theft of data] as soon as they discovered it.” He said the company wouldn’t discuss the measures taken, as “we don’t want to give away the blueprint” to other potential attackers. And Kane added that Subway had been asked by the Justice Department not to comment on other details of the case, as it is part of an ongoing investigation.

It’ll be a pretty interesting case to watch either way, we’ll have to see what else gets discovered (and more importantly released to the public).

Subway corporate IT has taken some measures against this, but as it was franchisee stores that got owned – I don’t honestly see how much they can do. Unless they implement a complete new POS system (which is secure and preferably doesn’t run Windows and connect to the Internet).

January 20, 2019 - 235 Shares

Social engineering has been around for tens of thousands of years so it is time we approach the topic in a professional manner. The Social Engineering Vulnerability Evaluation and Recommendation (SEVER) Project is one way to help penetration testers become more consistent. It is also intended to be the best way to teach novices about social engineering concepts.

By distilling thousands of pages of theory into a simple form the SEVER project hopes to:

Provide the fastest means of training novices about complex social engineering concepts.

Provide penetration testers with a methodology that minimizes their effort while increasing their chance of success.

You will begin by defining requirements, then brainstorm solutions, and then refine your solutions through multiple phases. Each phase increases in detail, allowing you to identify ‘show stoppers’ as soon as possible. This will help you avoid wasting time working on a plan that is not going to succeed. If an idea makes it through the entire process and you still feel good about it then you should have a very high chance of success.

The best format for this content would be an electronic form with a lot of context-sensitive notes. But since there is currently no effective, portable way of accomplishing that I decided to split the content into two PDF files – the SEVER Worksheet and the SEVER Instructions. Go through these instructions while you fill out the form until you have a thorough understanding of how the form works. If you cheat and try to do one before the other (or skip the instructions altogether) you will miss things which will make failure far more likely.

The latest news is of a more technical nature, but it outlines ways in which cybercrooks may well be able to send out premium-rate SMS messages without the handset owner knowing due to weaknesses in the actual standard.

Cybercrooks may be able to force mobiles to send premium-rate SMS messages or prevent them from receiving messages due to security weaknesses in mobile telecoms standards.

The weakness involves the handling of messages directed towards SIM Application Toolkits, applications preloaded onto SIM cards by mobile operators. The applications can be used for functions such as displaying available credit or checking voicemail, as well as handling value-added services, such as micro-payments.

SIM Toolkits receive commands via specially formatted and digitally signed SMS messages. These messages are processed without appearing in a user’s inbox and without triggering any other form of alert. Some mobiles may wake from a sleeping state on receipt of such messages but that is about all that’s likely to happen.

The encryption scheme deployed is robust but problems might arise because error messages are automatically sent out if a command cannot be executed. The SIM Toolkit service message can be configured so that responses are made via SMS to a sender’s number or to the operator’s message centre. This creates two possible attack scenarios.

It seems to be a theoretical attack right now, but seen as though it’s a flaw with the way the standard works (and it’s implemented this way on literally millions of phones) it could become a major issue.

I would imagine it’s something vendors can fix on future handsets they sell, or on previous handsets via a firmware update – but that wouldn’t cover everyone.

In all likelihood however, I see the most likely ath would be it stats as a purely theoretical attack.

In the first case, an attacker might use an SMS spoofing service to force the dispatch of an error message to a premium-rate number, potentially ringing up fraudulent charges against the account of a targeted phone owner in the process.

Attackers can’t control the content of the automatic error responses, a potential stumbling block when it comes to signing up people up for these services simply because they’ve sent a message, but it’s easy to imagine this tactic will be effective enough times to make it potentially workable. A premium-rate number is restricted to signing up people to its services only in response to properly formatted requests rather than an any old message.

In the second case, an SIM Toolkit error message is sent to the operator’s message centre, and this is interpreted as a message delivery failure. Operators usually attempt to resend the undelivered message: creating an error loop that prevents the delivery of legitimate SMS messages to a user’s handset until a bogus SIM Toolkit message times out, typically after 24 hours or so. Because of this, sending a series of bogus SIM Toolkit messages creates a means of running an SMS DoS attack.

Independent security researcher Bogdan Alecu gave a presentation explaining the security shortcoming, and demonstrating how it might be exploited, at a recent DeepSec security conference in Vienna, Austria.

Alecu tested the attack against phones from Samsung, Nokia, HTC, RIM and Apple. Only phones from Nokia have the option to ask users before confirming the dispatch of an SIM Toolkit response. However the the option “Confirm SIM Service Actions” is usually disabled by default. Operators could mitigate the attack by filtering SIM Toolkit messages and whitelisting numbers that are allowed to send them. However Alecu said he is yet to encounter an operator that applies such controls, even after testing the attack on mobile operators in Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, Germany and France, IDG reports

The SIM DoS attack is fairly interesting as it could prevent a user from receiving legitimate SMS responses almost indefinitely. There are various ways to mitigate against the attack and it seems like Nokia has the most secure handset as of now – even though the option to prevent these attacks is turned off by default – at least they have the option.

The other way is to get the service providers to filter out the messages and use a whitelist for legitimate SIM Toolkit messages – I don’t think that’s very likely though.

January 20, 2019 - 235 Shares

MysqlPasswordAuditor is the FREE Mysql password recovery and auditing software. Mysql is one of the popular and powerful database software used by most of the web based and server side applications.

If you have ever lost or forgotten your Mysql database password then MysqlPasswordAuditor can help in recovering it easily. It can also help you to audit Mysql database server setup in an corporate environment by discovering the weak password configurations. This makes it one of the must have tool for IT administrators & Penetration Testers.

MysqlPasswordAuditor is very easy to use with the simple dictionary based password recovery method. By default it includes small password list file, however you can find more password dictionary files at OpenWall collection. You can also use tools like Crunch, Cupp to generate custom password list files on your own and then use it with MysqlPasswordAuditor.

MysqlPasswordAuditor works on wide range of platforms starting from Windows XP to latest operating system Windows 7.

Features

Free and Simple software to Recover/Audit Mysql Password.

Very useful for IT administrators & Penetration Testers

Dictionary based Password Recovery method

Detailed statistics such as tested passwords, elapsed time, progress bar is displayed during Audit operation.

January 20, 2019 - 235 Shares

It looks like Microsoft originally had a patch for the BEAST vulnerability, but for some reason they have withdrawn it for the December Patch Tuesday.

It’s a pretty bumper crop of patches though with 13 bulletins and 19 vulnerabilities fixed, the highest profile one being a patch for the zero-day vulnerability exploited by Duqu.

The pulling of the BEAST patch is good in a way though I guess, it shows that Microsoft are doing comprehensive compatibility testing to ensure the patches don’t cause any problems (including with 3rd party software).

Microsoft released 13 security bulletins addressing 19 vulnerabilities overnight, as part of a bumper final Patch Tuesday of the year.

Highlight of the baker’s dozen is a patch for the the zero-day vulnerability exploited by Duqu (sibling of Stuxnet) worm back in October. Fixing the underlying flaw exploited by Duqu involves the resolution of a problem in how Windows kernel mode driver handles TrueType font files.

Aside from this critical update the batch includes an update to address a critical flaw n Windows Media Player. A cumulative security update of ActiveX kill bits is covered by the third, and final, critical update this month. The other ten bulletins address less severe (important) flaws in Windows, IE and Office. Altogether its a desktop-heavy patch batch, as you can see from Microsoft’s summary here.

Microsoft originally promised 14 bulletins for the December edition of Patch Tuesday but one has been pulled, probably for quality control reasons. The original anticipated 14th bulletin was for the BEAST attack, but did not make it in time for the holidays due to a last minute software incompatibility uncovered during third party testing, security services firm Qualys reports. The absence of this fix means that Microsoft has issued a grand total of 99 bulletins this year, one less than the ton up that might have resulted in adverse headlines.

Both BEAST and Duqu are pretty nasty malware, I’d guess seen as though they’ve already fixed the BEAST problem – they just need to work on compatibility issues – that we’ll definitely be seeing the patch rolled out in the January Patch Tuesday.

It’s good to see a bunch of important patches rolled out pre Christmas though as there’s always an influx of malware, scams, spams and phishing attempts around this period (trying to leverage on people’s good will I guess).

The BEAST attack affects web servers that support SSLv3/TLSv1 encryption. Although a patch will have to wait until January, at least, Microsoft has already published a workaround, which involves using the non affected RC4 cipher in SSL setups.

The Internet Storm Centre has produced a helpful graphical overview of the Black Tuesday updates from Microsoft here. It reckons that some of the flaws are more severe than Redmond’s rating. By the ISC’s count there are EIGHT critical updates. Either way you look at it, this is a lot of patching work even before we think about other security updates doing the rounds.

Google and Adobe are also joining in on the season of giving by releasing updates of their own. Adobe last week issued a critical updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat. The latest version of Adobe PDF-reading software, Adobe Reader X, is not affected by this vulnerability thanks to the use of sand-boxing technology. So users have the option to either upgrade or apply a patch to the earlier version of the software.

In addition, Google published an update to its Chrome browser that addresses 15 security flaws, including six high-risk vulnerabilities, on Tuesday. More details of what’s fixed inside Chrome 16.0.912.63, the latest cross-platform version of the browser (yes Mac and Linux fans you ought to update too), can be found here.

There has been some other nasty bugs around too with a zero-day for Adobe Reader last week and Google just released a massive update of Chrome including 6 high risk vulnerabilities.

SANS ISC as always gives a great summary of the patches and classifies some of them more seriously than Microsoft does – you can check out the details here: